The Cambridge Satchel Company's sample sale

The only item from my daughter’s schooldays that’s stood the test of time is her beloved brown leather satchel. I bought it for her when she started school at the age of four - and she still uses it. It’s pretty bashed up these days, but the other week a young woman tapped her on the shoulder in M&S and said: “I love your satchel. Where did you get it from?”

Now an independent student on the verge of moving to Paris, my daughter’s been longing for a new satchel for ages. So when she discovered that the Cambridge Satchel Company was holding a sample sale in Cambridge this weekend we jumped in the car and hared east. Thank you to Liberty London Girl, by the way, for posting the details on Facebook.

The Cambridge Satchel Company was founded by accountant Julie Deane, who loves satchels as much as me and my daughter. “I had a satchel that stayed with me all the way through school,” says Julie, “and the more battered it got the more character it had.”

Looking to start her own business, Julie hit on the idea of selling traditional satchels in zingy colours. The rest is history. Fearne Cotton’s been spotted out and about with a fluorescent yellow satchel and Alexa Chung often sports a navy version. The UK-made satchels sell all over the world and have even appeared in Gossip Girl and Glee.

When we got to the Guildhall in Cambridge, the satchels (above) were selling like hot cakes. I spotted one girl queuing up to buy five, in hues of pale yellow, baby pink, bright green, black and orange. My daughter snapped up a gorgeous silver satchel and even though my student days are long gone I couldn’t resist getting one in navy. The sale (the satchels are selling for up to 60 per cent off) is on again today (August 12), so if you’re anywhere near Cambridge, don’t miss it.

Friday Book Review - Rush of Blood by Mark Billingham

Mark Billingham began his career as a stand-up comedian. But these days he writes crime novels and reckons the two occupations have a lot in common. “As a comedian you walk out on stage and you have a minute to hook them or they’ll start booing,” he said in a recent interview. “As a writer it’s very similar. A reader doesn’t have time to say ‘I’ll give him 50 pages as it’s not very good yet, but I hope it’ll get better.”

Billingham has built up a huge following for his addictive crime novels starring Detective Inspective Tom Thorne. And deservedly so. But he writes standalone stories too, like Rush of Blood, his latest.

Rush of Blood is the chilling account of three couples who meet on holiday in Florida and, even though they don’t have much in common, become friends. Then, on the last night of the trip, the teenage daughter of a fellow holidaymaker goes missing.

The couples return home in shock but make an effort to meet over the coming months, each pair hosting a dinner party in turn. As they get to know each other better, dark secrets and ugly obsessions emerge – especially after the young girl’s body is found and all six become murder suspects.

This is a compelling story that kept me on the edge of my seat till the very last page. If you like pacy, well written crime fiction, you’ll love this.

Rush of Blood by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown, £16.99)

Charlotte Dujardin - from stable girl to Olympic champion

When I wrote Olympic Flames, my London 2012 inspired novella, earlier this year, I had never heard of Charlotte Dujardin.

Charlotte is the prodigiously talented young dressage rider who along with team mates Carl Hester and Laura Bechtolsheimer scooped the Olympic gold medal this week. It's the first time Britain has won the team dressage event since it became an Olympic sport 100 years ago.

Today everyone’s keeping their fingers tightly crossed that Charlotte clinches a second Olympic gold by winning the individual dressage competition.

But one of the most inspiring things about 27 year old Charlotte is that she worked her way up from stable hand to Olympic champion in just five years. Unlike many other equestrian stars, she doesn’t come from a privileged background and her family had to scrimp and save to help her make it. A keen rider, she left her comprehensive school at 16 and at 20 began working as a stable girl for her now team mate Carl Hester. He spotted her talent immediately and let her ride his new horse Valegro – the horse that has taken her to Olympic glory.

It’s a fantastic story - and testament to Charlotte’s talent and determination. But I was extra-thrilled because when I came up with the idea for Olympic Flames I was adamant that my heroine wasn’t going to be someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Unlike Charlotte, the star of my book, Mimi Carter, is a show jumper, not a dressage rider. But like Charlotte, she doesn’t come from a wealthy background. Mimi left school at 16, got a job as a stable girl and eventually won a place in the British show jumping team.

As I became immersed in my story I wasn’t sure how feasible Mimi’s rise from humble stable girl to Olympic star would be.

Now, having seen Charlotte Dujardin in action at Greenwich Park this week, I know that it is really is. Go Charlotte!

Louise Mensch steps down

The news that Conservative MP Louise Mensch is stepping down from her parliamentary seat will reignite the “can women have it all?” debate.

I’ve long thought that the answer is probably “no,” and I reckon that Mensch, the mother of three young children, has decided the same.

A hugely successful chick-lit author before winning the Corby and East Northamptonshire seat for the Tories in 2010, Mensch has had to juggle her family life, parliamentary work (including a prominent role on the Commons Culture Committee inquiry into phone hacking) and marriage to her second husband. He’s the New York-based manager of Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, so Mensch has spent much of her time jetting back and forth across the Atlantic to see him.

In her letter of resignation to PM David Cameron she wrote: “As you know, I have been struggling for some time to find the best outcome for my family life, and have decided, in order to keep us together, to move to New York. With the greatest regret, I am thus resigning as a Member of Parliament.

‘It is only through your personal intervention, delivered quietly and without fanfare, that I have been able to manage my duties for this long. Your allowing me to work in Corby and East Northamptonshire each Thursday and Friday has enabled me to do weekly surgeries while Parliament has been in session, and to visit many more people and places in our local area, whilst still spending time with my children. Unfortunately, it has not proved to be enough. I have been unable to make the balancing act work for our family.”

It sounds as though David Cameron did all he could to make Mensch’s juggling act possible, but most women don’t have such helpful bosses. And in the end, she found that even that wasn’t enough. She simply couldn’t have it all.

When I look around at my contemporaries the most successful women either don’t have children, have wall to wall childcare or stay at home partners.

As a lifelong feminist I hate saying this, but we still haven’t found the answer to how women can combine the best of both worlds. In lots of ways Mensch is lucky because she’s talented, feisty and has a successful second career. I’m sure that once she gets to New York she’ll write another cracking bestseller – and maybe even get snapped up by a US TV station. One thing’s for sure. We definitely haven’t heard the last of Louise Mensch.


PS. We arrived back from the sun-baked south of France (above) to encounter grey skies and torrential rain. How can this be August? 

The Crest Jazz Festival and the amazing Charles Pasi

As the moon rose over the mountains, the sky turned from pink to mauve. Below us, stalls sold tartines and glasses of Clairette de Die (the local sparkling wine), while little children skipped hand in hand with their parents.

My daughter leaned over and whispered in my ear. ‘I’ve never seen such a well-behaved audience at a festival before,’ she said, astonished that everyone was clapping along in unison.

This was Crest Jazz Vocal, one of the highlights of my summer. We’d bought tickets to see Mountain Men, a zany Franco-Australian jazz duo, and Charles Pasi, a French blues singer and harmonica player who’s so talented I can’t believe he isn’t a superstar already. Actually, he was a finalist in the international Memphis Blues Festival in 2006 so he’s doing pretty well.

The Crest jazz festival has been going for 37 years and attracts audiences of all ages. The best moment of the night was when Charles Pasi beckoned the front few rows to join him and his band onstage. We were sitting near the back, I’m glad to say, but loads of people jumped up with alacrity. An elderly man in a dazzling white suit and jaunty hat danced wildly, a woman with a rucksack on her back jived fit to drop and even one of the Mountain Men couldn’t resist joining in. Charles Pasi and his band took it all in their good-natured stride.

At that moment something brushed the top of my head. I whirled round to see a tiny flying creature soar up, up and away. It was a bat! 

The Mont Ventoux chronicles

As we drove south, through olive groves, lavender fields and dusty tracks twisting up the scorched Provençal hillside, I felt more and more nervous.

My son, sitting in the back of the car with his sister, was as happy as Larry – especially as the distinctive peak of Mont Ventoux appeared above the skyline.

We’d left at dawn so he could attempt to cycle up Mont Ventoux for the first time. He only took up road biking a month ago, but he’d set his heart on doing it before his 18^th birthday. A commendable ambition, I know, but I was full of trepidation.

Mont Ventoux, all 1,912 metres of it, is famed in cycling circles. There are higher mountains in France but Mont Ventoux stands on its own, right at the heart of Provence. There’s an abandoned weather station at the top, while just below the punishing peak is a shrine to the memory of Tommy Simpson, the British cyclist who died from heat exhaustion during the 1967 Tour de France. “Put me back on my bike” were his last immortal words.

We arrived in the village of Bédoin at 9.30 am, took the bike off the car roof and my son raced away. The rest of us adjourned to a cafe down the road to keep our minds off his climb.

We’d arranged to meet him two-thirds of the way up - to hand over two more water bottles. But to our astonishment he’d got a lot further than we’d expected. When we caught up with him he gave us a cheery wave, said he was feeling fine and kept on pedalling.

We met him at the summit, which looks a bit like a lunar landscape, and it turned out he’d done the whole ride in just under two hours – his goal for his first attempt.

Then came the moment he was really looking forward to – the glorious ride down, followed by a stop at the bike shop in Bédoin to buy an I conquered Mont Ventoux cycling shirt...